Is it time to start placing those
Oscar bets right now? On the basis of the utterly delightful
new trailer for Stan & Ollie, absolutely
yes.

It's the untold story of
piano-wrangling, iconic comedy double act Laurel and Hardy -
the Stan and Ollie of the title, both of whom were pioneers
of early Hollywood slapstick.

But for all their fame and status
as cinematic legends, their later years were wracked by
bitterness and regret. It's this melancholy epilogue that
forms the basis of the new movie, in which Steve Coogan and
John C. Reilly are set to give eerily convincing
performances as the bumbling duo, wracked as much by
professional jealousy as love for each other. Meanwhile,
additional prickly humour comes from bickering wives Ida
(Nina Arianda) and Lucille (Shirley Henderson).

For Coogan, it's the latest
collaboration with Oscar-nominated Philomena
screenwriter Jeff Pope, as he accentuates the isolated
Laurel's body language and wavering Transatlantic accent.
Meanwhile Reilly (who can soon be seen in quirky Western
The Sisters Brothers) is a dead ringer for the
imposing, moustachioed Hardy.

Hollywood loves to honour a movie
that reflects on the workings of the cinema industry, and
this would appear to fit the bill. Flashing back and forward
between the pair's final tour along the seaside coasts of
Britain, and their unforgettable black and white movie
heyday, it's bound to hit fans right in the nostalgia
bone.

The movie isn't released in the UK
until 11th January 2019, but, excitingly, Cineworld are
hosting the closing night gala screening of Stan and
Ollie at this year's London Film Festival in October.
Check out the trailer and let us know @Cineworld if you
think this will be an Oscar favourite.

Cineworld website

Star photo

I never assume that I've seen all
of the photos, or even the Hal Roach stills, of Laurel and
Hardy. Here's one I've never seen before, Babe at the piano,
serenading Stan in a scene cut from "Pick a Star." I haven't
seen the script for this film, but I suspect the stills
showing the boys in tuxedos and squiring Rosina Lawrence and
Patsy Kelly to a swanky event probably were from a "big
movie premiere" scene.

Randy Skretvedt on
Facebook

Snow time

Rare photo of Oliver Hardy in the
snow. From my collection.

Stephen Neale on
Facebook

On the
Forum

On the L&H Forum's
Facebook page, we were invited to share this
image if we would like to see Stan Laurel's face on
the new £50 note from the Bank of
England.

We love it!

Penny
wise

An
artist, Ed Chapman has produced the above images of
the Boys made from coins, Stan from pennies, Babe
from cents.

Apparently it's been
commissioned to coincide with the premier of the
new film about the Boys.

At our October meeting 17
people watched The Lucky Dog (the first film
to star both Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy), Beau
Hunks and the Oscar winning The Music Box.
Our next meeting will be on Monday 19 November
2018 at Ashton under Lyne Cricket Club. Film show
begins at 8.00pm. All welcome.

Dean
Carroll

Makes you
think!

In the press

Jonathan Hayward saw a piece by
film critic Derek Malcolm in The Guardian a few days
back. He says, "He met the Boys in his youth, and it is a
nice little story, but the reactions in the comments
underneath are massively affectionate in showing
appreciation of L & H, with only the occasional very
half-hearted dissenting voices.

As someone who met Orson
Welles, Luis Buñuel, John Ford, Satyajit
Ray, Howard Hawks, Katharine Hepburn, Charlie
Chaplin and many others in the course of a long
stint as the Guardian's film critic, I am often
asked who was my favourite movie star. The answer
is none of them. My favourites are Stan Laurel and
Oliver Hardy. Mind you, I was in my mid-teens when
I met them, which probably led to the kind of
adolescent hero worship I might later have
abjured.

My mother had taken me to
the London Coliseum to see them perform. It was
1947 and they were in their 50s, with 20 years as a
double act under their belts. It was the matinee of
a variety show and they were top of the bill; Elsie
and Doris Waters, a pair of well-loved comedians -
known as Gert and Daisy - and Rawicz and Landauer
&endash; famous piano duettists who played Chopin
twice as fast as anybody else - were on the
undercard.

I can't say that Laurel
and Hardy were at their very best. Maybe the stage
was not their natural habitat, although they were
still treading the boards together well into the
1950s, as seen in the new biopic Stan &
Ollie, in which Steve Coogan and John C Reilly
play the pair during their gruelling final tour of
Britain. But I was thrilled to bits just to see
them and I asked my mother at the interval whether
I could meet them. She asked the theatre manager
and he came back with a note. It said: "Yes, but
don't bring your mother "

The manager took me to the
door of their dressing room and knocked, but left
before Hardy answered the door. "Come in, young
man," he said. "We have tea and buns on the way for
you. This is Stan, by the way, as you can see by
his hat. He seldom takes its off, even in
bed."

I was tongue-tied. But
when the tray of tea and buns came in, I tucked in
enthusiastically. Whereupon Hardy took a bun from
the tray, placed it on his chair and sat on it. It
was, of course, squashed flat. I'm pretty sure he
did it to amuse me. But you never knew with Hardy,
who preferred playing golf to working.

Laurel looked horrified,
especially when Hardy offered the flat bun to me.
He was the master of most situations and the pair's
directors invariably deferred to him on set. He was
also the British one, born in Ulverston,
Lancashire, in 1890, and was once employed by the
music-hall impresario Fred Karno as an understudy
to Chaplin. Hardy was born in 1892 in Harlem,
Georgia and drawn to the movies from his
teens.

It was clear that they
were ageing. The cheers that welcomed them at the
theatre, which was three-quarters full, were not so
enthusiastic when they left the stage, which may be
why they were prepared to entertain a young boy so
anxious to see them. If so, they gave no sign of
that to me.

They were determined to
entertain me and they did so royally, asking me
about my school, the subjects I liked and whether I
preferred the theatre or the cinema. When I told
them I often went to the newsreel cinema on
Victoria station, which invariably had a Laurel and
Hardy short, along with the boring documentaries
and songs, they were clearly very pleased. And they
told me that many countries had different names for
them. In Iran, they were called the Fat and the
Skinny; in Poland, Flip and Flap; in Germany,
Chubby and Dumb; and, best of all, in India, Stout
and Worrywart.

We spent almost an hour
together before they called for the manager, who
took me back to my mother, who was waiting
impatiently in the foyer. I will never forget that
flat bun, or the stories they told me about
appearing on television and being informed that
they were being introduced to 6 million people:
"That will take rather a long time," said Laurel.
Another of his gags I recall from that day was: "I
was dreaming I was awake, but I woke up and found
myself asleep."

But it was never verbal
jokes that defined the pair. It was the
extraordinary way they dovetailed, almost
telepathically. No one did double-takes better than
Hardy; and few did weeping at fate's enormity
better than Laurel. They once did a short film in
which they used 3,000 cream pies, most of which
were upended over Hardy.

But it wasn't the pies
that most intrigued me. In another short, the pair
sat together in the front seats of an old car that
Hardy couldn't start. And, for a full three minutes
they managed to make everyone laugh, just by the
various expressions on their faces. It was a
masterpiece of comedy I shall never forget, and so
was the little dance they did together at the end
of their Oscar-winning film The Music Box.
Just meeting them was one of the most cherishable
moments of my life.